


Wishes To Take Flight

by nothing_rhymes_with_ianto



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Modern AU, Origami, senbazuru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto/pseuds/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On his days off, Feuilly folds paper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wishes To Take Flight

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh I got randomly inspired for absolutely no reason and this is what happened.

On his days off, he folds paper. It’s silly, because sometimes he feels like he should be sick of paper, what with his night job as a mail sorter at the post office and all the damn essays he has to write for uni. But on his days off, Feuilly folds paper.

He learned about the Japanese legend of one thousand paper cranes years ago, from Yua, a coworker who had just moved from Tokyo. She had taught him to fold little paper cranes on their breaks and explained to him that if you folded one thousand paper cranes in one year, you would be granted one wish. Her thin fingers had flown quickly over the white sheet, folding and creasing and plucking until a graceful bird had appeared from the once-bland piece of paper.

He had practiced under her watchful eye, over and over in the break room, until his cranes looked like hers.He wasn’t interested in the art of origami, although it was fascinating and beautiful and often calmed him down just by following the rhythmic folds of paper. It was the legend that had captivated him.

Yua moved away long ago, but he still folds paper. He’s taken the legend and tweaked it for his own purpose. He folds paper into colourful little cranes for two people he’s never known. He folds and creases, his own fingers flying over the sheet of paper, lost in the calming sensation of movement, and thinks about what they might have been like. Would they have loved him, if they had not died? Would they have been kind and lovely? Would they have taught him everything his curious mind wanted to know? The cranes don’t have the answer, but some part of his mind that he usually calls ridiculous is still fixated on that wish.

Bahorel buys him new origami paper whenever he starts to run out, never the same colours or patterns. The stack of paper wrapped in clear plastic appears on his bed when he gets home from work. They don’t talk about the cranes. Bahorel had come home one day to a dozen cranes swimming across the coffee table, and when Feuilly had tried to explain, he’d just nodded and put his hand on Feuilly’s shoulder and told him it was okay, he got it.

So on his days off, Feuilly folds paper into cranes. He strings them together and hangs them in his closet instead of clothes. He folds paper full of colour and life for those who have neither. He folds paper and wishes he had memories instead of made-up stories. He folds paper and thinks of the parents he never met and the wish he only might one day get. He folds paper into cranes and sees one thousand gliding across the sky when he looks outside at night, and he knows he can fold enough.


End file.
